I’m Going, Going, Back, Back, To Gondor, Gondor!

The enemy is moving, the beacons are lit, and a league has formed. The local club has called and Gondor will answer!

It has been several months since I participated in a one day MESBG tournament. Very little painting or hobbying of any kind has taken place since then, due to moving and a new job. Luckily I did not move far, because several of the organizers and participants of the previous tournament have decided to form a league with monthly games. This seems like the next logical step for my rag-tag band, so of course I answered the call!

While tournaments were never my thing, I have far more familiarity with leagues. In my high school days I was deeply invested in Warhammer Fantasy and participated in a league that also ran campaigns. Those were heady times that I remember with a mix of nostalgia and disgust. There was an undead player with a beautifully painted army, including dozens of extra skeletons that were there just in case his necromancer could summon them. There was also this one jerk who brought an entire unit of empty cavalry stands and played them as Grail Knights. We have all encountered this guy at some point in time and he should be shunned.

The difference here is that I have met most of the people that will be in the league and played games against several of them. We are all mature adults, capable of moderating our emotions and speaking up when something is detracting from our experience, and so I am excited to play in a league with these folks! Equally exciting is the mix of armies coming to the league. Several players have multiple armies and will be switching them out from game to game, which is allowed so long as they create their army lists ahead of time and declare which armies are playing in which month before the league starts.

Though I have the beginnings of a Mordor army in boxes, nothing is assembled or painted, so I will bring my Gondorians. That list was as follows:

That’s 550 points of pure Gondorian beef, right there. What does it need? Well, first and foremost, I think I need to re-evaluate the number of bows in the list. There are currently 7 bowmen in the list, one with Faramir and three in each of the other warbands. I have heard it said by many players that you want at least a few bows to force people to do things, but I think 7 is far too many, given their total output of 0 kills over the three games of the tournament. I am going to remove the bows from the second and third warbands and replace them with swordsmen, so both warbands have 6 front-liners.

Those warbands are full, so it’s time to see what we can do with Faramir. Since the swordsmen and bowmen both cost 9 points I haven’t actually spent anything yet, so I have 50 points to put into Faramir’s Warband. He buffs knights, who have a powerful charge even without him, so it only makes sense to take a couple more. Two more knights totals 30 points, so now I’m left with 20. I could do two more spearmen, but they will be stuck deploying with Faramir and the knights, who were not always front and center in my games. The sole bowman in the list is in this warband, so it seems to make the most sense to put another couple of them here so I don’t feel the need to sprint them towards the battle line once the game starts.

So now I am in the awkward spot of having two points left over. I would really like to bring every single point onto the table, so I am going to convert a swordsman in each of the other warbands into a spearman. After all, spearmen can support other spearmen just as easily as swordsmen. And there we have it, 600 points of Gondorians, or Minas Tirith, to be more precise!

What do you think of my Minas Tirith League List? Please rip it apart in the comments!

Grayson "The Hungry Halberdier" Brill

Gray was lucky (and old) enough to buy a box of RTB01 space marines new off the shelf and the rest is history. His passion for miniatures and game development has lead him into sales and production roles for tabletop companies, and on Quixotic personal ventures as well. He loves retro, historical and indie gaming, has a keenly honed sense of nostalgia for 40K and WFB, and loves to paint. Most of his gaming is done with his two sons who are just discovering the joys of the hobby, and the rest of his time is spent reading History, Fantasy and Sci-Fi, or painting minis and writing games for fun.

See Full Bio